Universe in a brush stroke

“When you understand yourself, it is very easy to paint or write poems or do calligraphy or tea-ceremony or karate. You paint effortlessly; you write effortlessly. Why? When you are painting or writing or doing any action, you become totally absorbed in that action. You are only painting; you are only writing. No thinking gets between you and the action. There is only not-thinking action. This is freedom.

“If you are thinking, your mind wanders away from your action, and the flow of your painting or writing will be blocked, your tea-ceremony will be still or clumsy. If you are not thinking, you are only with your action. You are the tea that you’re drinking. You are the brush that you’re painting with. Not-thinking is before thinking. You are the whole universe; the universe is you. This is Zen mind, absolute mind. It is beyond space and time, beyond the dualities of self and other; good and bad, life and death. The truth is just like this. So when a Zen person is painting, the whole universe is present in the tip of his brush.”